Friday, May 25, 2012

Announcement: As of May 4, 2012, Samuel Martin's book
"Thy Rod and Thy Staff, They Comfort Me: Christians and the Spanking
Controversy" is now available for free - For details, please see - http://samuelmartin.blogspot.com/2012/05/pen-is-mightier-than-punch.html

Before you say “I
Do”

I have been
pretty active in the last five years or so concerning the issue of corporal
punishment and the Bible and I am pleased to say that I am thankful for some of
the results that have been and continue to be achieved through this activity.
I plan to continue right on in advocating for more accurate, studied
theological positions on this issue. So much more work needs to be done.

However, there
are many other social issues which need attention because people are hurting
and I really feel the pain that so many have. One area that has become
particularly important to me of late is the issue of marriage, divorce and
remarriage. This issue by the way is directly linked to the issue of corporal
punishment of children in many Christian contexts and I will have more to say
on that soon.

I have an
online friend who has suffered greatly in a marriage where her husband did not
treat her nicely for the last 25 years. For the last five years, she found
herself suffering from really terrible mental abuse. Thankfully, she was not
physically abused, but to be in a marriage to someone who does not act nicely,
behave like a caring person or show even the common decency that one would
expect from someone who is supposed to be in love with another person (which I
think is fairly obvious that people who are married should actually love each
other and that love should be growing stronger with time, not becoming weaker),
this is certainly not a pleasant experience and for her is was a time of great
personal suffering.

So, my online
friend reached out to me with a couple of questions. To make a long story
short, I would say over a time period of about one month, I was able to provide
my online friend with some solid information from the Scriptures that (along
with many other inputs) helped her a lot.

To any
Christian who is facing hard situations in life, accurate information from the
Word of God is often what is needed the most. We need accurate information about what the
Bible is teaching and about what it means for us today.

Let me say
though that I, of course, do not have a monopoly on the truth about this or any
other issue, but I do have God’s book in front of me to study and as I have
learned with my study of the issue of corporal punishment and what many Bible
teachers are telling us and have told us in the past, many of the
understandings that these dear people have may need a little modification.

I do not have
all the answers and I am not alone. In fact, let’s refer to a book which I
think shows very clearly the problem that many Bible believing God fearing Christians
are facing over this issue of marriage and secondarily divorce and finally and
very importantly, remarriage.

The book is
titled: “Divorce and Remarriage: Four Christian Views.” So just think
about that title for a moment and what it means practically. Before we do that
we need to know in summary what these four views are because let us not be
confused with the fact that there is no unanimity in belief on what the Bible
teaches on this issue and this is the case among major Scripture scholars
teaching in seminaries or at the university level around the world.

So what are the
four views? They are that the Christian Scriptures teach that:

1. There is
no divorce and no remarriage

2. Divorce
is allowed, but after one has divorced, remarriage is not allowed

3. Divorce
and Remarriage are both allowed if one has been the victim of adultery or
desertion

4. Divorce
and Remarriage allowed under a variety of different circumstances

Now concerning
this book, which came out in 1990, which I absolutely urge any interested party
to read, what we find therein are four essays by four Christian professors all
teaching at the university or seminary level and each one is advocating for the
truth of his (yes – they are all men in this book along with the editor)
respective position. Then in each chapter each of the respective authors rebuts
the position of the other professors.

Let me tell you
a fact. This book when I first read it got me so angry and annoyed that
Christians could not find unanimity on such an important issue. Sadly, in the
last 22 years, nothing has changed particularly in evangelical Christianity.

In 2006,
this issue has been brought up again in another book called “Remarriage after Divorce in Today's Church: 3
Views.” Look at what Amazon tells us about this book.

“A biblical
and practical case for three main evangelical views on remarriage after divorce
Among born-again Christians, 27 percent have experienced divorce as compared to
24 percent in the general population. Yet no consensus exists among
evangelicals on their views of remarriage, leaving many Christians confused. This
single volume summarizes and explores three main evangelical views:

Yes, many Christians are confused over this issue and it’s no
wonder because even the scholars can’t agree on what the Bible teaches. All
along this confusion over such an important issue of marriage and who you spend
your life with is bearing fruit. If you do not have it right, imagine what kind
of fruit your marriage is bearing?

Let us not be confused. All of the contributors to both of these
books are evangelical Christian scholars who are teaching in a seminary or
university environment. It is their teachings that defend or shape their own
denominational perspectives and it is they who are holding up the status quo
that they were taught and believe. It is also they who are training a future generation of pastors, Bible teachers and professors.

But there is one important point about this book and the previous
book. All of the various positions taken cannot be right. In fact, in the first book, three out of
four of them are totally wrong. This is not me judging them. It is a simple
fact of arithmetic.

God has one view on the issue of marriage, divorce and remarriage.
That is clear. So, it is clear that it is impossible for all of these dear
brethren to be correct.

But what about those who are adhering to the teachings of those who
are wrong? What fruit are they bearing? The experience of my online friend
gives us a glimpse into such a situation. For those going through it,
especially the person being victimized, it is literally a hell on earth with, for some, no escape or way out.

Let’s not
diminish the importance of this issue to the lives of people. To my online
friend, I can see that she has basically been mentally tortured with being in
an awful marriage to a “man” who basically was a total jerk to her and her
kids. I put “man” in quotes because anyone who would treat his wife and
children in the way that my online friend described to me concerning her
relationship, this person, while indeed human, was anything but a real
dignified honorable “man.”

I’ve been very
interested as I said in the whole corporal punishment issue and I didn’t think
it was the right time to really branch out and discuss other issues which I
have not studied so much, but here I have to admit that while I have not personally
studied this issue as well as I have the corporal punishment one, I do have specific
authoritative Scripturally based resources which I trust 100% available to me which
represent the highest level of scholarship on this issue. So I feel absolutely
comfortable moving forward and writing about this issue.

Judging from the
reaction of my online friend to these resources, my belief and confidence in
these materials has been 100% confirmed.

So, since this
is the case, I will be silent no more on this issue and will be taking a
specific position concerning it. But before I tell you what that position is, I
think it best to give you the evidence for that position.

I would like to
thank my dear online friend. I pray that through your reaching out that some
other people might be blessed by a perspective which is closer to that which
was communicated by Jesus and the Apostles and the one today which Jesus is
still teaching us through the agency of His Holy Spirit.ADDITIONAL NOTE:Based upon on further researcher, I am delaying this series of posts due to new information I have learned. More coming on this soon.

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Announcement: As of May 4, 2012, Samuel Martin's book "Thy Rod and
Thy Staff, They Comfort Me: Christians and the Spanking Controversy" is
now available for free - For details, download it here - http://whynottrainachild.com/2013/06/22/download-martins-book/

One
of the best messages one could ever get

I've received some really
great messages of late and wanted to share a few of them.

Some came from individuals like this
one:

1. I'd like the PDF of your book. I
really appreciate your work. I've seen firsthand the damage that the teachings
of the Pearls and this like them can do.

Others came from individuals working
in non-governmental organizations focused on child protection like these:

2.
I would be delighted to receive your newsletter. I am currently outside the
country training facilitators who will be training parents in their provinces
the positive discipline programme. Both ‘spare the rod and spoil the
child’ and ‘children should be seen and not heard’ both came up. I was thrilled
to be able to share your work.

3. We are presently involved in
amending our Children’s Act – and motivating very strongly on the issue of
corporal punishment. Religious arguments are constantly used to support the
retention of Corporal Punishment. We would really value your book and use it in
order to continue our work.

4. Please could you forward me a
copy of the abovementioned book? As a Christian myself and also being
involved in child protection in my work I am sure it would be a useful tool for
both myself and my staff – and keep up the good work!

Others mentioned sites working
toward child betterment like the following:

5. Are you aware of the online
message board Gentle Christian Mothers?
http://www.gentlechristianmothers.com/community/archive/index.php It’s an
excellent place to direct parents who are attempting to switch from punitive
parenting to grace-based parenting.

Others came from mental health
professionals like this one:

6. As a counselor and therapist
looking to add parenting classes to my offerings, I would love to see what your
thoughts are on corporal punishment (very common in the South).

I've gotten many messages like this
one over the years and spoken to many parents (mostly mothers) who echo what
this message says: that is, they never felt right about spanking their child in
their hearts, but were willing to do ahead and do it in the name of obedience
to God.

7. I was spanked as a child and
always thought that was what God wanted but THANK JESUS for the many
revelations I have had recently about parenting! I just feel so genuinely
excited about raising my daughter now...thinking God expected / wanted me to
hit my kids to teach them right always felt wrong to me but I was prepared to
do it because I really believed that to be what God wanted. I'm so grateful my
eyes have been opened. And so looking forward to educating myself more on this
issue. Thank you for what you do!!! You are a blessing.

These previous messages really
warmed my heart, but when people talk about finding my blog either with very
small children or who are just becoming parents for the first time, these
messages mean so much to me personally:

8. I am a new mom to a beautiful
baby girl and have recently found your blog! I was hoping to get a copy of your
book, Thy rod and thy staff, They Comfort Me.

9. I came upon your book title,
"Thy Rod and Thy Staff, They Comfort Me: Christians and the Spanking
Controversy," in a blog posted by The Hippie Housewife, where she
mentions you are offering your book on corporal punishment and the Bible free
of charge. As my husband and I are pregnant with our first child, and
discussing discipline philosophy, I was wondering if your offer is still good?

I have to admit that this last one
is especially moving for me. This is what this blog is all about. Helping
people have accurate information to make informed decisions in benefit of
themselves and their families starting even when the children are in the womb
but even not yet conceived.

Thank you to everyone who mentioned
my book through their online presence. There are so many wonderful blogs,
newsletters and websites and your support and friendship has meant so much the
years. Finally, I have to mention The Hippie Housewife's blog - All her posts
are awesome. Here is one that touched me of late talking about how motherhood
changed her view of God.

We can see that the summary from Edersheim
paints a drastically different picture about our Judeo-Christian heritage when
it comes to child rearing than many of our Christian teachers tell us today.

Let’s be clear. This verse in Proverbs 23:13,14
is really a very key passage which I look at as a springboard to much greater
violence. It is so easy to see how Bible teachers by comparison can justify
things like withholding food, putting children out in the cold or dousing then
with cold water for training purposes, putting hot sauce in children’s mouths
(another hell fire approach), making children drink buttermilk, letting them
get burned on stoves and many others we could rehearse here, but I think we are
getting the idea. [Note: Thanks to those who wrote me or left comments on FB
about this]

It is such an easy step from Proverbs 23:13,14
to all of the abovementioned violence. However, is this step really justified
in Scripture? I say absolutely not.

To better understand my arguments concerning this
issue, I urge you to write me and get a free copy of my book “Thy Rod and Thy
Staff, They Comfort Me: Christians and the Spanking Controversy” because I have
a whole chapter and an appendix dedicated to this verse of Proverbs 23:13,14.

Download the book for free here:
http://parentingfreedom.com/samuelmartin.pdf

Friday, May 18, 2012

Such ideas of excessive beatings, parents being urged to punch
their own kids or especially discussing thoughts which were frightening and
beyond the intellect of a young child were quite foreign to ancient Jewish
culture. One of the early authors who I learned a great deal from and who
dramatically influenced my own work was Alfred Edersheim. He had some very
interesting comments about the approaches to education which ancient Jewish
texts promote. Note the following:

“But indeed, to the Jew, child-life was
something peculiarly holy, and the duty of filling it with thoughts of God
specially sacred. It almost seems as if the people generally had retained among
them the echo of our Lord's saying, that their angels continually behold the
face of our Father which is in heaven. Hence the religious care connected with
education. The grand object of the teacher was moral as well as intellectual
training. To keep children from all intercourse with the vicious; to suppress
all feelings of bitterness, even though wrong had been done to
one's parents; to punish all real wrong-doing; not to prefer one child to
another; rather to show sin in its repulsiveness than to predict what
punishment would follow, either in this or the next world, so as not to
"discourage" the child--such are some of the rules laid down. A
teacher was not even to promise a child anything which he did not mean to
perform, lest its mind be familiarised with falsehood. Everything that might
call up disagreeable or indelicate thoughts was to be carefully avoided.”
(Edersheim, Sketches of Jewish Social Life, Ch. 8 - http://www.ccel.org/ccel/edersheim/sketches.txt - Note the whole book is available for free on
this site)

Corporal and Eternal Punishment: Time to disconnect these two ideas
once and for all – Part One

Very early on in my studies into this issue (early 1990’s), I
remember watching a video (or perhaps it was an audio cassette tape) of a talk
given by John Bradshaw and he was speaking about Hell. He was giving
recollections about his upbringing in a Roman Catholic educational environment
and this talk he gave included two things which really impacted me greatly
early on in my interest concerning this issue of corporal punishment.

Bradshaw was talking about nuns in his school who showed him
pictures of Hell as a deterrent to bad behavior. He even joked about it saying
that he had no idea where the nuns got these pictures of Hell from, but he does
remember them showing him the pictures and threatening him with Hell fire if he
did not behave well.

The other thing
he mentioned in the talk was his personal experience of being burned with a
candle as a type of taste what was coming to him in the future by his religious
teachers in the school environment.

I don’t remember the precise quote or the exact context of the
discussion, but I do remember at that time, I was deeply influenced by that
issue. (I myself have never been burned with a candle.)

But what John said next after sharing his own experience of being
burned was that he had shared this information in a workshop and just by chance
he asked if anyone else had ever experienced something similar and a full one
third of the attendees in the event raised their hands! Burning children with
candles to give them a little taste of their eternal destiny is not some
isolated one off thing. It used to be very common behavior in some religious
circles.

This for me was and still is an awful example of some child
discipline gone very, very wrong, but let us not play down this issue as not
important. It is very important because in our day when well-intentioned
fundamentalist Christian ministers continue to trumpet corporal punishment as God’s
chosen method for disciplining children, when ‘pastors’ urge parents to ‘punch’
their children to eliminate behavior they believe is undesirable and when
eternal punishment is brought into the whole equation of child rearing with the
intention of literally attempting to scare children into behaving better, we
really need a wakeup call on what kinds of awful messages we are communicating
to our kids. It is a very common phrase that we find in many well-intentioned
but seriously misguided Protestant circles who think we need to “beat the devil
out of children” and to this we can seemingly add “burn children to give them a
little taste of hell fire.” This is really monstrous because it is largely based
on an incorrect understanding of the verse from Proverbs 23:13, 14 which says
the following in the King James Version:

“Withhold
not correction from the child: for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall
not die.Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver
his soul from hell.”

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About Me

Samuel Martin was born in England and is the youngest child of Dr. Ernest L. and Helen R. Martin, who are both Americans. He lived in the UK for the first 7 years of his life before moving to the USA with his family at age 7. He lived in the USA until 2001 when he married a native Israeli and relocated to live in Jerusalem. He and his wife, Sonia, have 2 daughters.
His experience with biblical scholarship began at an early age. His father initiated a program in conjunction with Hebrew Univ. and Prof. Benjamin Mazar, where over a 5 year period, some 450 college students came to work on an archaeological excavation in Jerusalem starting in 1969. Since that first trip, Samuel has visited Israel on 14 different occasions living more than 5 years of his life in the country. He has toured all areas of Israel as well as worked in several archaeological excavations.
Today, he has begun his academic career publishing 2 books dealing with biblical issues.
I write regularly on biblical subjects with a particular interest in children, families, nature, science and the Bible,and gender in the Biblical context.